British Cacti and Succulent Society National Show

Well, last weekend I went to the British Cacti and Succulent National Show. I nearly didn't make it because the weekend before I'd been in hospital with acute tonsilitis (the tonsils come out in December, so hopefully will not be a problem for long!). Anyway, the only reason I went was to meet Paul Shirley and to see his collection of Hoyas.

Paul was lovely. The show was fairly interesting too. Unfortunately I'm not really a cacti person and, although I find stapelias/huernias fairly interesting, they'll only hold my interest for so long.

I found Paul fairly fast. It wasn't hard, given that he was fairly close to the entrance and the only one selling hoyas. Here he is doing his stuff.

Here is a photo of some of the plants he was selling:

There were all sorts, even a couple of dischidas hiding in amongst the hoyas, waiting to be sold. He sold all his big plants, which included imperialis, variegated kerrii and a couple of baskets of linearis and shepherdii.

I bought dykiae, GPS 81079 (similar to obscura) and meliflua. Here they are after I'd potted them up:

Some Favourites...

For some reason, some of my favourite hoyas begin with "L"

Here you can see Hoya lasiantha (well, it's praetorii, but we'll gloss over that), Hoya linearis and Hoya lauterbachii in all their glory. I got the lasiantha late last year and I didn't know whether it would make it through the winter. Well, it did fine, and I've got several new leaves over the last couple of months! It reminds me a bit of a large multiflora and I hope to see it flower this year, if I'm lucky. The linearis I got only a month ago, and all ready I've got several new furry leaves AND a peduncle! I can't believe my luck! I hope to post the flowers, if I see any, sometime in July.
The lauterbachii I just love for the cute furry leaves. The new baby leaves are even cuter and furrier! I took a cutting from it earlier this year because it wasn't looking happy, but I think that was mostly because it was cold. Now it's looking great again. I don't know if I'll ever see a flower, but that really would be something.
Oh, and I've added a new rooting section to my website here. Suggestions, comments, please.

Surprise!

I wasn't expecting this yet, but I got home to find this a couple of evenings ago...
I know it's only carnosa, but it's still lovely to see after the winter.

What the eye does not see...

I have been playing with my new camera and took this shot of my carnosa in bud:and when I magnified it up it looked like this:
How pretty is that? Fascinating, the little hairs!

Not A Good Winter for The Hoyas

This winter has been very bad for my poor plants. At least one third of my plants have gone yellow and died. It's very sad, but there doesn't seem to be very much I can do for the poor things. This is my Imperialis in its last throes...

However, I do have a couple of plants that are showing signs of flowering - so you never know, there may be some good news around the corner.

It's Back, and Better Than Ever

.... and it DOES smell, very faintly. If you have lots of flowers and you put your nose right in them, you can get a faint whiff of wisteria... lovely!

Aaaargh!

My polyneura just lost the will to live and just dehydrated on me... the ends are not good but I live in hope I can resuscitate it... I doubt it though :(

One mealie? Surely there must be more somewhere... this one disintegrated after I dabbed it with acetone...

Newly Moved... and A Great Talk

Well, I've moved again... now I live in Leytonstone, east London. More on my new place to come, and how I've coped with no windowsills (agh!).

I discovered that my local BCSS (that's british cactus and succulent society) is somewhere in the middle of nowhere that I can't get to by public transport. However, the adjacent BCSS meets up in Ilford, which isn't too far up the road. And, much to my delight, they were giving a talk on Asclepiadaceae family, which of course contains my much beloved Hoyas. Since my engleriana was in flower, I thought I would take it along to put on the table contest. When I arrived, however, I discovered that, similar to the Bristol cactus and succulent society, their table competition no longer existed (probably due to low numbers/people unwilling to cart their plants around) however, i was able to display mine along with a couple the speaker had brought along with him, including this rather beautiful Hoya cinnamomifolia:

The talk was given by Vernon Read, who's obviously been growing stapelias and related bizarre plants (sorry, I'm sure they have a certain charm but to me not only are they ugly, but their flowers stink of rotten meat. Yeugh!) along with hoyas for some time. I'm afraid I probably interrupted most but I wanted to ask questions! Vernon was a really interesting guy who gave us loads of information about the stapelias and where they all came from etc. In the break we had a cup of tea and I chatted to Vernon about my collection and Hoyas (apparently there is a national collection somewhere - must go visit it at some point!). There was a raffle competition, in which a Hoya cinamomifolia was a prize, and guess who won to pick first. Hmmm. Was it me? I wonder if that was fixed at all?!?
The second part of the talk got to Hoyas at the end and I got to see loads of photos, including some native shots of Hoyas in Singapore, which was really interesting. All in all it was a fab night for me seeing and talking about my favourite plants. Now I want to go back to Kew Gardens again!

What's That Smell?

I'm now in my new house, which seems to be filled with those scented glass jobs which I hate. However, the other day I came home and I could smell something else. It was a clean, fresh scent, and my lacunosa had been budding up for days. I didn't think that it would have opened yet, but, lo and behold:They're amazing, beautifully small and fluffy.

July Blooms

Well, despite the horrible gloominess of July - seems that it's a miracle when the sun comes out, and we're lucky not to be flooded - my hoyas are still going for it and my multiflora, which sadly lost its buds earlier this year, has finally, after what felt like WEEKS of waiting for them to get to the final blooming stage, shown its colours. It does smell, but only very faintly.
The publicalyx, now on its third round of flowers on the same peduncle this year - crazy - is very scented and is really gorgeous at night. I can't get over the furry petals and the endless show of purple.
The carnosa's out again, as well, very pale this time due to not being sunburnt (!) and the australis is going mad with at least five plus peduncles budding up. Also to come include the bella producing its first set of flowers for me, the engleriana also budding up and my first peduncle on the lacunosa, which is very interesting!

New Additions

This is Hoya Parasitica var. citrina. I haven't seen much about this one on the internet, but apparently it flowers so much it almost wears itself out. I thought the leaves on the Kerri and Lauterbachii were big but these leaves are as big as a woman's hand! This plant rooted well but was a bit unsteady so in the end I had to fasten it down with a length of garden wire made into a hoop so that it would hold straight in the soil and hopefully root down and stabilize itself. I also recently added the plant pole so that it will grow straight upwards and hopefully grow some new gigantic leaves.

This is Hoya Curtisii, almost exactly opposite to the Hoya Parasitica var Citrina due to its itsy bitsy leaves - and lots of them! I read somewhere that it likes to grow along soil so I took some more garden wire and threaded each piece round. It's growing quite happily now and I've even got some new leaves.

Temporary Diversion

I thought I would share with you my mother's beautiful epiphyllums. This one is likely to be a cutting off the same plant as this, which would mean this is an Epiphyllum cooperi.
Just for Epiforums, I thought I'd put another photo of the entire plant. It's amazing that one small cactus can produce a flower quite so large, and for such a small amount of time. Seems like such a waste of energy, but a pretty one at that.
I know some of you really wonder whether the beer fertilizer works. Well, take a look at this. This orchid usually flowers for me in the dead of winter with one spike bearing maybe three flowers. Well, after feeding with very very weak beer fertilizer, I have TWO spikes, with at least five flowers on each. I'm enchanted.

Flowers In The Attic

My current bedroom is now at the top of my folk's house, in the attic. The attic's insulation is so bad that I can hear the pigeons scuffling outside on the roof. This means it's baking hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. However, my plants are loving the warmth, and the ones that have been sulking for a while (heuschkeliana, pentaphlebia to name the worst) are showing growth for the first time in a while. My publicalyx, right. is being extraordinarily generous, just as one umbel of flowers falls off its one peduncle, another one replaces it and lasts for another two weeks. The carnosa, middle, has roared through its 8 plus umbels which have lasted me over a month or two and, as the last ones fade gently, is promising more. The australis, right, supposedly not a summer bloomer, is also joining in the show. It smells lovely.

Hills Says Goodbye To Big Windowsills

I'm leaving my house soon, in a long and complicated story. I will lose my lovely windowsills and end up with one window which I believe doesn't get any direct sunlight. Me and my hoyas have loved it here, and we hope we can set up somewhere new with as much light (but maybe a bit more warmth!) very very soon.

Crazy Carnosa

My carnosa has started flowering from one of its many many peduncles (I got to eight and gave up counting!!) so, now because I have the carnosa in my lounge and the publicalyx in my bedroom, the house smells very sweet at night. It's quite pleasant. I thought it would be fun to compare the two flowers, so here we go...



The publicalyx is just bigger and curvier, plus the fur on the petals gives a really nice edge to the flowers.

A Little Story For You

(you'll have to excuse me, my mind sometimes works in strange ways, and this is what it came up with)

The hoya was ready. It was healthy, had plenty of food and lived in a humid environment. It produced big and beautiful buds, which were now ready to open.
It started opening its buds, peeking into the new world, in the morning, getting ready for the evening. As the day wore on the buds opened up fully and the hoya started to make nectar to entice its visitors.



By the end of the day it was ready. The hoya produced the sweetest smell and nectar to entice the moths to come its way and to take its pollen off to another hoya so that it could produce seeds.

But no moths came, because the plant was inside.

Ciao, Bella!

A couple of days ago I recieved the Hoya Bella, albomarginate form. This is not on my final list of hoyas I want to collect (trying to cut down, very unsucessfully, on my endless hoya buying), however it was on my wanted list for a very long time and it was fairly cheap, so I bought it anyway. I reckon I can put it in with the regular bella (shown by it) and then it'll be "one" plant.

Type: Leaves approx. 4cm long and lanceolate (arrow shaped). Flowers white with a pink corona. Smell very faintly of hyacinth.
A hanging plant, that I rooted easily in a Jiffy 7 with bottom heat, that is apparently a slow grower but a good bloomer. Fairly thirsty and happy in dappled light.

Just One Flower...

This is my Publicalyx cv Silver Pink, finally flowering! Unfortunately I lost most of the flowers - they blasted, possibly due to overwatering, I don't know. But I was very pleased even just to get one flower - it surprised me when I got back very late last night. It had a huge droplet of nectar on it and smelled very much like the carnosa.

So it takes two weeks from flat buds to form open flowers.

Hello... European Visitors

Ok, so I know I get a few visitors from Europe.

I'm trying to organise a European Round Robin, where I start by sending out a box of cuttings to some lucky person, who then replaces each cutting they take out with a different cutting, and preferably not a common hoya, and a good couple of nodes worth too. They then send it on to the next lucky person, who will do the same thing until it gets back to me.

Let me know if you're interested - email me at hilary.roberts@hotmail.com

No, I Really Don't Need It....

Hoya Curtisii

I'm trying very hard at the moment to not buy any more hoyas. I have decided on the three last hoyas I want, and I'm going to stick to it. Yes I am. I have no more space.